L'Affriolé

affrioler,
v.t. To allure, to entice, to attract as with a bait.

An enthusiastic recommendation
from Patricia Wells and inclusion in Jeffrey Steingarten’s short list were
bait enough for me. The chef who aroused their enthusiasm had moved on, but
a red-starred entry in Time Out assured me that the new owner was keeping
up the standards. In the event the gamble paid off and Mary and I, with friends
Hugh and Meg, enjoyed a meal of considerable pleasure and sophistication.
Compared with a typical bistro, the architectural ambience is rather more
ambitious but also somewhat ambiguous. The molding surrounding the arches
and windows is of a simplified and scaled-down baroque splendor, while the
table tops are a rather folksy mosaic, hand-crafted by a friend of the original
owner. This sounds like a recipe for aesthetic disjuncture, but the predominant
brown/beige color scheme, including solid curved-back wooden chairs, brings
potential conflicts into harmony.

In fact, both the ambiance
and the menu make this a bistro to which you could bring a wide range of
guests and be reasonably confident that they would feel comfortable. The
dishes Mary and I had between us were imaginative – “crossover” even – but
not weird, and were well executed:

As the room filled, the service remained
as friendly and as competant as when, upon our early arrival, it was empty.
This was yet another verification of our sources. But that shouldn’t be
surprising. Throughout our Paris dining we have had a luxury usually denied
to professional restaurant critics – the priviledge of ignoring the newest
and most fashionable and patronizing simply the best.